Billie Eilish is finally pushing the single that fans have favored all along. This morning, the singer shared the new video for “Birds Of A Feather,” the second single from her (gorgeous) 2024 album Hit Me Hard And Soft.
It’s a pretty neat, if lowkey, clip but… is anyone else getting a bit of a Jamiroquai vibe from this? Obviously, it’s not a one-to-one homage, but the video for “Birds” shares some similarities to the famous clip for “Virtual Insanity.” They’re both in a relatively empty space that is moving around them seemingly of its own power, and there’s a couch. True, Jamiroquai is much more of a dancer than Eilish is, but they’ve both got a silly hat! Given that Eilish’s previous video was heavily indebted to turn-of-the-millennium fashion trends, it doesn’t seem like a stretch that “Virtual Insanity” was on the mood board here.
“Birds Of A Feather” had a bit of an odd trajectory toward becoming Hit Me Hard And Soft’s biggest single. Eilish declined to release any songs ahead of the album’s bow in May, opting to let people consume the entire album as a complete body of work. Still, when it was released, it was “Lunch” that got the big push with a music video. That track fared pretty well, but fans gravitated toward “Birds,” which ranked high on the Billboard Hot 100 since its release. (It sits at number 5, as of this writing.) Eilish also performed the song at the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics, as part of the torch-passing to her hometown of Los Angeles. The singer also scored another hit this summer with her Charli xcx collaboration “Guess.”
On Friday, Sept. 27, the "Bad Guy" artist shared the music video for her single "Birds of a Feather" from her latest album Hit Me Hard and Soft which features Eilish levitating in an empty office. Throughout the Zamiri-directed visual, the pop star, 22, is tilted in a chair, dragged across the floor and is even lifted into the air by a ghost as she sings romantically about a lover.
“I don’t know what I’m crying for/ I don’t think I could love you more,” Eilish sings. “It might not be long, but baby, I/ I’ll love you ’til the day that I die.”
When Billie Eilish sings, “I’ll love you ’til the day that I die” on “Birds of a Feather,” that deadline also includes the afterlife. In the Hit Me Hard and Soft single’s new Aidan Zamiri-directed music video that arrived Friday (Sept. 27), the 22-year-old pop star sits alone in an abandoned office building, smiling to herself as the invisible ghost of a loved one jerks her around, pulls on her chair and drags her across the floor. “I don’t know what I’m crying for/ I don’t think I could love you more,” she sings. “It might not be long, but baby, I/ I’ll love you ’til the day that I die.”
The visual arrives just two days ahead of the start of Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft World Tour, which kicks off Sunday (Sept. 29) in Quebec. The arena trek will span North America, Australia and Europe, ending in July in Dublin. The run will also include three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden Oct. 16-18. The next day, on Oct. 19, Eilish will return to Saturday Night Live to serve as musical guest for a Michael Keaton-hosted episode.
Billie Eilish has shared a new video for “Birds of a Feather,” from Hit Me Hard and Soft, ahead of her tour kickoff on Sunday. Watch her submit to supernatural forces in the Aidan Zamiri–directed short below.
As well as hitting the road for a lengthy jaunt across North America, Europe, and Australasia, Eilish will feature as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, soon starting its 50th season, on October 19, swiftly following up her December 2023 appearance. The new video follows her appearance, with Charli XCX, on the “Guess” remix and her June performance of “The Greatest” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Billie Eilish is just going with the flow of life — even if it might hurt in the end. On Friday, the musician released the video for “Birds of a Feather,” which watches the singer calmly dragged through an office building as she sings about her overtaking feelings. The Aidan Zamiri-directed video opens with Eilish singing along to the track before her arms start jerking around as if she were a puppet tied to invisible strings. Eilish — clearly unbothered as she smiles while singing — starts spinning in her chair before being dragged and smashed into different rooms of an office building. “I’ll love you until the day that I die,” she sings before smashing into a glass room, shattering her glasses. The new visual reconnects Eilish and Zamiri, who also directed the video for Charli XCX’s “Guess,” which featured Eilish. “Love you so much twin,” she wrote on an Instagram post about the video. The video also marks her third from Hit Me Hard, following “Chihiro” and “Lunch.”
“Even in a great pop year that’s already been a super-chunk cluster-bunch of bold statements for mega-pop queens, Hit Me Hard and Soft stands out as something uniquely strange,” read a Rolling Stone review of the project by Rob Sheffield, calling “Birds of a Feather” a “poignant Eighties-flavored love song that could pass for vintage Sade or George Michael.” Eilish is set to perform again on Saturday Night Live on Oct. 19 after she launches her Hit Me Hard and Soft arena tour on Sept. 29 in Quebec.
Months after releasing her latest album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, Billie Eilish has finally released a music video for the biggest song on the record, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER.” While the pop ballad has soundtracked many TikToks and Instagram carousels this summer, it wasn’t until today that Eilish shared her own official visuals for the track. It’s directed by Aidan Zamiri, who recently helmed Charli XCX’s “360” and “Guess” videos, the latter of which features Eilish (and about 10,000 sets of underwear). For “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” however, the visuals are rather sparse—no mountains of undergarments to see here—with Eilish singing solo, seated in an empty room. But as the song progresses, she gets pulled by an invisible force throughout an office, levitating in the air, breaking through rooms, getting dragged across the floor, and pulled up walls. All the while, she continues singing her romantic tune, unperturbed. It’s kind of like the feeling of being so madly in love that it takes over you and pulls you in different directions, but you ultimately don’t care where it takes you.
Eilish cares a great deal about her music videos. In 2021, she told ELLE what it was like directing the visuals for her previous album, Happier Than Ever. “I am a very visual person, and music videos have always been my favorite form of artistry, ever since I was a kid,” she said. “Since the beginning, almost all of my videos were my own ideas. I just didn’t know that I could direct them. It’s hard to translate an idea that you have in your own head—to make somebody else understand it—and then make it come to life. Sometimes you’ve just got to do it yourself, even if it’s hard.” The release comes just days before she kicks off her tour on September 29. Find Tickets Here
Billie Eilish has dropped a music video for the Hit Me Hard and Soft track “Bird of a Feather.” Upon the album’s release, the song quickly became a fan favorite. In the visual, Eilish is situated inside of a corporate office. She sits in a chair in an otherwise empty room and begins being pulled in all directions by an invisible force, all while performing into the camera. After flopping on the ground, Eilish once again begins floating – a symbol that seems to relay the feeling of being pulled in different directions by someone who isn’t actually present. Hit Me Hard and Soft debuted in May, marking Eilish’s third studio album. This weekend, the singer will kick off her globetrotting tour, which will span until July 2025. Watch the official music video for Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” above.
Billie Eilish is back on top of one of the most competitive charts published each week by Billboard. The pop and alternative superstar earns another No. 1 on the Pop Airplay tally this frame, which ranks the tunes that reach the largest number of people across top 40 pop stations throughout the U.S. “Birds of a Feather” flies to No. 1 on the Pop Airplay tally this week, reaching the summit for the first time. The tune flaps its wings and soars from third place to the throne. Eilish grabs the top spot on the most closely-watched pop radio ranking from one of the hottest rising stars in the music industry. Last week, Chappell Roan scored her first leader on the Pop Airplay chart. “Good Luck, Babe!” lifted to No. 1, but it only managed to hold on for a single frame. “Birds of a Feather” marks Eilish’s third career winner on the Pop Airplay list, and her first in several years. She first landed in the peak position in August 2019—half a decade ago. Her breakout smash “Bad Guy,” which turned her from a rising talent to a household name, quickly became the singer’s debut leader.
Welcome back to this week’s edition of the Wichitan’s Song of the Week. This week’s pick is “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” by California-born singer-songwriter Billie Eilish. Released May 17, 2024 as the fourth track on her third studio album “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT,” “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” is Eilish’s most powerful love song to date. The song is a love story between Eilish and a special someone where she is falling in love and wishing for that feeling to never end. She ties the feeling of being in love with the happiest moment of her life and just as the title suggests, she hopes her special someone sticks with her like birds of a feather. Eilish narrates the ups and downs of a relationship through the eleven tracks of “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT.” She often narrates all the times in her life a relationship has been bad but in “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” she explains that falling in love and being in a relationship can and should be happy, fun and good. Born in Los Angeles, Eilish is an award-winning singer-songwriter best known for her debut single, “Ocean Eyes.” With the help of her award-winning songwriter and producer brother, FINNEAS, Eilish’s musical career has been filled with praise and recognition. I have been a fan of Eilish and FINNEAS since the start of both of their musical careers so it was a no brainer to present this song for Song of the Week. I chose this song for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, ever since the release of “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT,” I have been obsessed with the song. It is a song that not just I but many people can easily relate to. Secondly, I believe this song to be Eilish’s best song to date. It is her best song vocally, lyrically and musical composition-wise. Vocally, this has been her most challenging song ever. Eilish’s singing style and vocal range has primarily been breathy, soft and low enough to be categorized as a mezzo-soprano or a contralto. This does not mean she has not gone outside of this before, evident in “No time to Die” and “Happier Than Ever.” In “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” she sings with a brighter tone than she is used to. The song also features the hardest and highest belt she has ever done in her career. Eilish and FINNEAS are the songwriters for the song to no surprise as he has co-written most of her hits. After being raised by two musicians and taking songwriting lessons for most of his life, FINNEAS is no stranger to how important songwriting is. Utilizing different songwriting styles to portray Eilish’s feelings, FINNEAS co-wrote an amazing love song for the ages. Just as he is a songwriter for his sister, FINNEAS is also Eilish’s primary musical producer and he produced every song on the album. “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” is in D major and has a tempo of 105 RPM, which helps its theme centered around love, energy and mortality. It also utilizes drums and a simple synth in the beginning and then adds strings in the background all to create a soundscape that not only complements Eilish’s vocals, but also explains the emotional message of the song. Lastly, this lo-fi mix of pop and indie music is a testament to Eilish’s’ commitment to authenticity and emotional depth. “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” is my favorite song from the album and one of my favorites from Eilish’s entire discography. In “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” Eilish sings about how it feels to be in love. She begins the song by saying that she wants her ‘person’ to stay and be with her. She describes how she wants to be with this person until either they have passed away or she has. In the refrain and pre-chorus of the song, she describes this feeling by relating it with the classic English saying, “Birds of a feather, flock together.” She says that she knows she can be alone, but she does not want to and that she would love to be with her person even if it is not forever. In the chorus, she finally professes her love. She uses the phrase, “‘Til the day that I die” three times in the chorus to emphasize that nothing can break her love but death. In the second verse, she tries to reassure her person that she is serious and her love is real. She acknowledges that she can see that her declaration of love can be seen as a joke but she explains that her constant compliments and admiration is not a bit. In the post-chorus, she ends the song by saying that if her love seems familiar it is because she “knew them in another life” and that she remembers everything about her person from that past life. She does this to emphasize that her love is eternal, a juxtaposition of her original comment of death being the only thing that could end her love. As stated in previous editions of the Song of the Week, lyricism is an important aspect of any song and FINNEAS and Eilish understood that when writing “BIRDS OF A FEATHER.” With their background and growing up in their mother’s songwriting classes and their many awards, nominations and recognition in songwriting, FINNEAS and Eilish are no strangers to expressing emotions through lyricism. In “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” the songwriters utilize storytelling and pathos to tell Eilish’s feelings and to give a powerful love ballad. My favorite lyric in the entire song are: “And I don’t know what I’m cryin’ for I don’t think I could love you more It might not be long, but baby, I I’ll love you ’til the day that I die ‘Til the day that I die ‘Til the light leaves my eyes ‘Til the day that I die” At its core, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” is a love song that captures the universal longing for an unbreakable and lasting connection. It highlights love’s ability to triumph over challenges and celebrates the profound emotional bonds that can form between two individuals. With its poignant lyrics and haunting melody, the song delivers a powerful and unforgettable listening experience.
